1. Field of the Description
The present invention relates, in general, to touchscreens and to techniques for selectively moving objects on a planar surface, and, more particularly, to a system that uses preferential friction on a vibrating or moving X-Y surface (e.g., an upper surface of a planar element such as a monitor or display) to provide a haptic touchscreen and to provide selective and controlled movement of objects supported by or on the X-Y surface.
2. Relevant Background
A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that a user can control through simple or multi-touch gestures by touching the screen with one or more fingers. Some touchscreens can also detect objects such as a stylus or ordinary or specially coated gloves. The user can use the touchscreen to react to what is displayed and to control how it is displayed. The touchscreen enables the user to interact directly with what is displayed, rather than using a mouse, touchpad, or any other intermediate device.
Touchscreens are common in devices such as game consoles, all-in-one computers, tablet computers, and smartphones. The popularity of smartphones, tablets, and many types of information appliances is driving the demand and acceptance of common touchscreens for portable and functional electronics. Touchscreens are popular in the medical field and in heavy industry, as well as in kiosks such as museum displays or room automation, where keyboard and mouse systems do not allow a suitably intuitive, rapid, or accurate interaction by the user with the display's content.
Today, touchscreens are pervasive and provide intuitive, visual ways to input information into tablet computers, cell phones, and all manner of electronic equipment. Touchscreen interfaces, however, do not normally provide tactile (or haptic) feedback that allows a user to determine the results of their interactions with the touchscreen surface. Recent industry efforts have added vibratory “clicks” to individual presses, e.g., in many cases, the entire device vibrates to indicate, for instance, a button press. Other industry efforts have used various types of high frequency vibration, often applied with piezoelectric actuators to the screen surface, to allow the user to “feel” the effect of a touch or a displayed surface texture. In this latter case, the computing device senses whether the user has hit some target (e.g., the area near an “enter” button) and then vibrates the screen to provide feedback to the user that the button area has been reached.
However, none of these approaches to a haptic touchscreen involves actually drawing (e.g., physically pulling or pushing) the user's finger in a direction based on the status of a controlling computer. Also, none of these touchscreen technologies actively position or move the person's hands or fingers on the touchscreen. Also, in existing touchscreens, there is no provision for individual objects (e.g., auxiliary physical game pieces) laying on the touchscreen to be able to be moved by the touchscreen itself in independent directions and at independent speeds.